Scared to Death
by 6wingdragon
Summary: Judy popped the weasel, and she's up in Bogo's office pleading her case. He'll have none of it, but maybe there's a reason bunnies shouldn't be cops. Let's take a look at a conversation no one had, hear the words unspoken, and listen to tales untold; these are moments that never were.


"Not now!" shouted Chief Bogo into the intercom; and that was the final word on the subject.

"Sir," pled Officer Judy Hopps, earning an immediate glare from her horned superior, "I don't wanna be a meter maid; I wanna be a real cop,"

"Do you think the mayor asked what _I_ wanted when he assigned you to me?" he grumbled.

"But, sir..."

"Life isn't some cartoon musical where you sing a little song and your insipid dreams magically come true! So let. It. Go." With a flare and huff of his nostrils, he dared the gray rabbit to defy him again, but she wiggled her nose and stared back with those bright purple eyes; Judy, a pillar of determination and integrity, found that her dealings with larger mammals were smoother with a temporary moment of introspection. "Hopps," he said after the tension and silence reached equilibrium, sitting back into his chair and pinching the bridge of his sizeable snout, "You've been in my precinct two days and already racked up more minor citations than _intentional_ troublemakers on the force," he explained, looking at her with those dull, unimpressed eyes, "You think because you're the first bunny to finish basic training, you have some mandate to do and act however you want. _Every_ new recruit gets parking duty; _I_ got parking duty on _my_ first day. It's not because you're a bunny, it's because you're _new_."

"Wait," she said, gears turning in her head, "what do you mean, 'the first to finish'? I thought... I thought I was the first to even _try_." Judy was confused, happy, and angry, all at the same time; her entire life, she was told that there were never any bunny cops, like the fact that bunnies _could_ be cops was taboo. "There were other bunny cadets?" she asked hopefully, ears up and forward as she leaned onto the enormous desk. Bogo was clearly annoyed by her conclusion, "That's not the point!" he insisted with a jabbing hoof-knuckle, but she didn't back down this time, "You're a loose cannon, Hopps, a trait I donot condone in my _larger_ officers; officers that, when they charge head-first into a dangerous situation, will cause more damage to their surroundings than themselves, but at least they'll survive to be reprimanded!"

"Sir, like I said before, I'm not some 'token bunny'; I can take care of myself-"

"I don't care, you're still a bunny, and-," he interrupted.

"What difference does that make?" she interrupted right back, but with indignation.

"My other officers can't be scared to death!"

Any prior awkward silences between them paled in comparison to this. Judy recoiled in disgust. "Cute" was one thing, most mammals didn't know bunnies received it as condescending; but to think that Chief Bogo based his judgment on such a vile prejudice was too, too much. He heaved slowly through his flared nostrils, but Judy wasn't scared of him, not any more. "I thought we could keep this civil," the rabbit said in quiet outrage, "but clearly, I was wrong. You're nothing more than a... a _specist_! Well, I won't darken your precinct any longer, but on my way out I'll be sure to file a complaint."

"What are you talking about?" he said quickly, rising up from his seat while bracing the desk.

"I won't stop with the precinct, either," she warned, taking her turn to jab a finger, "You think City Hall's up your tail now? Wait until they hear that their chief of police clouds his judgment with urban legends, and cruel falsehoods. Who knows what else you're hiding? Maybe sheep drown themselves by staring up at the rain, or maybe lions are polygamists. That'll go over _great_ with the mayor and assistant mayor, I'm sure."

"Shut your tiny mouth, now!" he ordered, displaying his own sense of indignation by striking the surface of his desk, " _those_ are untrue, and quite frankly, insulting to mammals everywhere."

"So is 'scared to death', _sir_ ," emphasized Judy, "it's a gross exaggeration with no empirical evidence, and on top of that, a physical impossibility. Rabbits _can't_ be 'scared to death'."

"Yes. They. _Can_ ," insisted the Cape buffalo through gritted teeth.

"This is unbelievable! How can you stand there and accuse me of being naive, when-"

"I hear it," interjected Bogo with a strained voice, the weight of his words and the trembling of his massive frame catching Judy off guard.

"Wait, what?"

"Whenever it's quiet," he continued, that anger in his eyes replaced with a stoic despair, "it's like a dull, distant noise, and I know I'll always hear it." Suddenly drained of strength, Bogo slumped back into his seat to cup his brow, leaving Judy silent and curious, but not excited. After another tense moment, Bogo put on his reading glasses to rummage through a desk drawer and pull out three folders, one notably smaller than the other two.

"This," he began, holding up one folder and finally looking at Judy, "is a compilation of the _known_ cases of rabbits that died of cardiac arrest following a shrill shriek - either old, mentally unstable, terminally ill or some combination thereof." A sheet of paper was pulled out and set before Judy; it depicted an elderly male rabbit, rather pathetic looking, and old enough to be her grandfather. "He was homeless in Savannah Square, tucked under a newspaper, and I was a young beat cop. I meant to wake him up and bring him to a nearby shelter, but as soon as he saw me he screamed, seized, and then died. It was a weak, hushed scream, no more than squeaky hinge, but I heard it."

"Oh my gosh..." she muttered, eyes wide with sympathetic fear as she looked down at the picture, and then up to the chief. "The coroner explained the 'death shriek' to me, which at the time I thought nothing but a myth. After some independent research I found these medical files. I hear about additional cases, rarely, but I stopped collecting them long, long ago." He returned the picture to the closed folder and set it on the desk to Judy's right before pulling up the second file, not bothering to open it, "This - to answer your earlier question - is a compilation of all the bunnies that enlisted into the Zootopian police force; a 0% graduation rate. They tried, and some almost made it, but ultimately could not rise to the challenge. All of them young, healthy, ambitious, and brave, they set out to break the rabbit mold; not unlike yourself." He put that folder on Judy's left. The third, and smallest, he slid between the first two, "This... is the overlap."

She looked at it, and it lay there. She looked up at Bogo, whom looked back, and patiently gestured to the folder. Neither he nor the folder would open to her silent pleas and divulge what she was - yes - afraid to know. So, like every obstacle up to now, she could only face this head on and by her own gumption. A wave of determination filled her as she set her brow and jaw, clapping a small paw to the folder to drag it closer, and then throwing it open like a curtain. Inside was the familiar cadet application, the precursor to a personnel file for a full-fledged police officer, with a photo of a stunningly handsome male rabbit. "'Robert "Bertie" Briar'," she read, "This is from _30 years ago_...?"

"According to testimony from family and friends, he was the golden bunny of the Burrows," Bogo explained, breaking Judy from her actual introspection, "Fast, strong, kind, smart, he was everything a rabbit aspired to be; except he wanted more than the carrot farm. He wanted to be a police officer, do what all who came before him failed to do, and there was no force in the world that could stop him."

She pulled the cadet application aside to find a suspended police report for a cold case, started by "Officer Bogo". Her brow furrowed as she read what wasn't redacted, and looked up in confusion, "This doesn't make any sense. According to this, Briar died from a 'rare heart condition' and 'hazing'," she looked up, "What is all this?"

"Hopps... Judy," he sighed, and leaned in to peer over his spectacles, "What I'm about to say does not leave this office. Are we clear?" He had the rabbit's undivided attention, "Yes, sir." He nodded and rested on his elbows, and despite slouching, was still quite large and looming, "My investigations into the 'death shriek' lead me to Cadet Briar. His death was still some few years before I joined the force, and the trial of his killers was fresh in the news. I received an anonymous tip to look into what happened at the academy:

"Briar was the rising star, top of his class in anything and everything. His fellows were divided, taken either by admiration or jealousy, but with time, the former far out-weighed the latter. The staunchly prejudiced, a trio of cadets lead by a coyote named 'Dunesworth', decided to 'initiate' him into the academy; they started a rumor that some mammals were going savage, which of course was preposterous, but Dunesworth was clever, and knew how to get under Briar's fur. This continued for nearly a month, bit-by-bit, until the once confident golden bunny checked over his shoulder and around corners when it was dark. His marks didn't falter, so they pretended to come around to him and put him into a false sense of security, setting him up for their trump card.

"One night, they got him from his bed on the pretense of urgency, lead him to one of the lesser-used storage buildings, and left him with a sabotaged flashlight that could only flicker. They covered the floor in fake blood, dodged in-and-out of his field of vision until they trapped him into a corner, where they 'pounced' on him with teeth covered in cherry syrup to look like blood."

Bogo paused and lowered his eyes, tapping his knuckly finger upon the desk with a tremendously heavy sigh. Judy stood rapt through the exposition, leaning forward on the edge of her seat, ears so far forward they shadowed her face like a wide-brimmed hat. She looked at the chief in his silence, which gave her mind time to think and relax back on her heels. "That's rather specific, 'cherry syrup', how did you..." she asked, a look of realization filling her eyes, "You took Dunesworth's testimony, didn't you?" To this, Bogo nodded with a solemn grunt.

"He gave me the full, true story on the promise I would never release it," he explained, "As far as the public was concerned, Briar died as you read it, and the three cadets were convicted of mammal-slaughter. During the trial, however, Dunesworth confessed to first degree murder, found in contempt of court after several attempts to quiet him, and spent the next 5 years in prison before committing suicide."

"...Suicide...?" whispered Judy, "Why... how?"

"Officially, suicide; but if you saw his cell, you'd know better," he explained with a harsh grunt, "Briar's death was a hard hit to the rabbit community; that bunny had a lot riding on his tiny shoulders. So, Dunesworth wasn't popular in prison: he fought constantly with other inmates, and frequented solitary confinement. Each time, he screamed and howled and clawed at the door, begging not to be left alone. Eventually, I got a meeting with him, and he told me he couldn't sleep with the nightmares, that he heard Briar's scream every quiet moment, when it filled his ears and wracked his brain. He was fitted with a no-howl muzzle because he howled 24/7, just to drown out the scream." Bogo shook his head and pulled out the cadet image of Dunesworth from the folder, examining it sadly, "He was the only one of the three to hear the scream, or at least admit to hearing it; coyotes have excellent hearing, you know, same with wolves, they can hear sounds inaudible to most mammals. I figure that's why the other two cadets didn't hear Briar's 'death shriek' over their own roaring.

"I think he died of fright, that one last time in solitary confinement," Bogo trailed off; Judy expected him to finish the thought with a "Fitting" or "How appropriate", but as she considered the circumstances, it was neither a fitting nor appropriate way to go. Such ends are meant for the villains on Saturday morning cartoons, not real mammals. "When I finished my investigation," he continued, "I was approached by a group of older rabbits, calling themselves 'The Burrows Council' and requesting to see my report. Somehow, they convinced the chief at the time to redact it, as you see there. I think they didn't want it known that a bunny could be scared to death, especially one as young and healthy as Bertie Briar."

"It'd be awful," Judy agreed; a sense of doom crept up her spine at the thought of it. It all seemed surreal, the "death shriek" and the "Council". She saw movies like "Wail of the Bunshee" and "The Pharabbit's Curse" back when she was a kid, but they made it all out as not only fiction but straight-up fantasy, nothing more.

"Thank you, Chief Bogo," she said, as the Cape buffalo stashed his files in a desk drawer and put his glasses away. "For what?" he asked, sitting back and looking at her with those same, unimpressed eyes. "For clearing all this up, why you're so worried about me taking cases, or facing down criminals; but it took a lot to... to kill Briar, and so long as I'm vigilant, and trust in my fellow officers, I have _nothing_ to fear," she said, standing up tall on the office chair, paws at her hips with her chest out, the vision of confidence and determination, and then adding, "except _fear_ , itself," looking rather pleased with herself.

"Glad to hear," he said, something like pretentiousness in his tone, leaning forward once more onto his elbows, "so to 'clear up' any other 'worries', you'll finish up your parking duty for the day, keep at it tomorrow, and into next week."

"What?" she exclaimed, "But I thought-"

"You thought _wrong_ , Hopps," he interrupted, furrowed brow returning with a vengeance, "You abandoned your post, against my explicit orders, on top of a slew of other citations I won't bother repeating; further more you are _not_ in the _system_. I shouldn't even let you put tickets on parked cars, but I decided to be nice and give you something to do until you have access to _basic_ precinct resources." Before she could make any claim about "bonding" or "trust", as she certainly was intended to do with her quiet gesticulations of incredulity, he glared and clenched his teeth, "So, I'll say it again: Let. It. Go."

"Chief Bogo, please!" pled Mrs. Otterton, slinking in through the crack of his office door, "Five minutes of your time, please."

"I'm sorry, sir. I tried to stop her," panted Officer Clawhauser, pointing at the intruding otter, "she's super slippery. I gotta go sit down..."

And the rest, as they say, is history.


End file.
